SA must bite the bullet and ban health sector strikes

We are becoming so used to comments about the dire state of government services that most of them seldom raise an eyebrow. But the remarks over the weekend by the SA Medical Association (Sama) about the Gauteng health system should make us all sit up and pay serious attention.

Sama chairperson Dr Mzukisi Grootboom said the association was concerned medical care in government institutions in Gauteng was heading in the same, dreadful, direction as the provincial departments of health in the North West, Limpopo and Eastern Cape, which are justifiably rated as “failed” provinces by experts.

The Gauteng administration has to find more than R160 million to pay court-ordered compensation to the victims and families of the Life Esidimeni tragedy. All told, 135 people died after a disastrous decision by the Gauteng department of health to relocate them from proper treatment centres to unsuitable NGOs. That money will have to come from existing budgets.

And that will cause more problems with the department’s workers. Already, strikers from the National Education, Health and Allied Workers Union (Nehawu) and the Democratic Nursing Organisation of SA (Denosa) have brought activities to a halt at the Charlotte Maxeke Johannesburg Academic Hospital, in protest at unpaid bonuses.

Health Minister Aaron Motsoaledi went as far as saying that anyone with “the audacity to get into theatre and stop people from performing operations … is a murderer. And we can’t have a murderer in our midst.”

There are also reports the department is so cash-strapped it cannot appoint newly qualified doctors wanting to complete community service.

Although it would be unfair for other departments to have to contribute to the compensation – or indeed for the provincial or national governments to make a special financial allocation to meet the demand – it is imperative that the money for the compensation not come out of the existing Gauteng health purse.

We will have to do this until the government bites the bullet and prohibits essential service workers from striking.

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